There was a bit of tactical last-train-back-to-Kent leaving. Mondays are literally the hardest day to go to a gig, though right?

Jack Johnson @ iTunes Festival

Issy Sampson

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He's no multi-tasker

Jack Johnson’s a surfer-turned-musician who lives in Hawaii and donates all his touring proceeds to charity, so it’d be pretty shocking if he came onstage at the Roundhouse twerking like Miley Cyrus and bit the head off a bat.

But he did! No, no of course he didn’t. On Day 16 of the iTunes Festival, even Jack himself acknowledged “after all that build up, it’s just one guy with an acoustic guitar”.

And that’s the problem with it just being “a guy with an acoustic guitar” who insists on playing new music that came out THAT LITERAL DAY – even if your audience is packed with terribly polite looking couples with matching topknots and surf hoodies, post gap-yah tie dye fans and the kind of people you’d trust to water your plants when you’re on holiday but hate to be sat next to at a wedding - even if you’re really, really good, people are rude (hello, 2013) and will feel free to talk through your lovely songs.

And towards the end, there was a bit of tactical last-train-back-to-Kent leaving. Mondays are literally the hardest day to go to a gig, though right?

Despite some of the songs being ten years old (Jack changed the lyrics of Do You Remember to “over twenty years have gone by” – a reference to it being twenty years since he met his wife), he had some issues remembering the order of his verses and even the words to songs.

“I can’t read and sing at the same time – these girls at the front have signs!” he insists. It’s a super-polite crowd, so the signs are hardly going to be One Direction-super-fan dirty.

'I think you’d make a considerate lover' or possibly 'You haircut is both attractive and practical' Who knows? It was enough to put Jack off …

His endearing stage-chat involves telling us about the inspiration behind his songs, most of which is “something lovely happened in my lovely life, I wrote a song about it” – meeting his wife, his son saying something adorable to him, being in a band, not letting his song be on a reality TV show, not really liking war… he didn’t reveal the inspiration behind Banana Pancakes.

Although, it’s probably about the time he made banana pancakes and they were lovely.

However, new songs and forgotten words aside, the reaction to his er, ‘hits’ was still heartwarming. Sitting, Waiting, Wishing, Good People and Better Together prompted the most embarrassing yet endearing out-of-tune singalong.

And that’s really all you want from “a guy with an acoustic guitar” on a Monday, isn’t it?

Setlist:

Do You Remember

I Got You

Good People

Washing Dishes

Taylor

Sitting Waiting Wishing

Flake

Shot Reverse Shot

Fortunate Fool

Radiate

Bubble Toes

Wasting Time

Don’t Believe A Thing I Say

Banana Pancakes

Tape Deck

Staple It Together

At or With Me

Encore:

Gone

Ones And Zeros

Angel/ Better Together

Home

iTunes Festival is FREE for competition winners and all performances will be streamed live worldwide via the iTunesFestival app, Apple TV and on iTunes.